While the GOP never sponsored candidates in Buffalo in what critics called an effort to suppress the city’s Democratic vote, the poll shows Poloncarz gaining in the suburbs. Collins posted a 17-point lead outside the city in October, but that edge now shrinks to 9 points.

In October, the Collins campaign criticized the Siena poll for oversampling city voters. But the latest effort drops city voters from 25 percent of the county total in October to 19 percent now — a figure even GOP critics have pegged as reasonable.

Siena did not change its polling tactics, Greenberg said. The lower city sample, he said, stems from the fact that the dynamics of the campaign caused more Buffalo residents to say they would go to the polls then and fewer now.

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